Deborah Bogen: In English We Call This Heaven

If solace for this long tired war comes with sky, if it is here now, beside us, behind us, and there above. Who holds the tarnished mirror that curves over fields flush with bloodied pawns, broken and soon for the box? And if it is truly sky beneath which we do our constant winnowing, under which we point crying chaff! chaff! chaff! Why do we not look up?

Winter raises his axe. We cross wet fields, wary, still seeking sustenance and succor. Light and light. Wanting what’s after aftermath, perhaps a vault in which moon and stars…

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Copyright 2015 Deborah Bogen

[Author’s note: This is one of two prose poems that will be hung on the wall in an Art Show (Chroniques) in Paris in a few days. The show pairs painters and writers. The curators asked us to give them something on “what people would rather not think about.” The most interesting thing will be the immigrant musicians performing in the street nearby to get some Press for the Calais refugee camps.]